tigcraft

A quick repair sometimes is to use sheet plastic from a builders cement bag or sand bag. That’s a very thick grade and wrap it round the ball and pop it back through. Done it many times on loose gear levers and similar as it gives it that nice ‘new’ firmness

Looking well and clean

I like them unmolested and that’s a nice example. Any pics of your ball joints??

Like the gaiter btw! I need one too

And such simple things as dropping your windows by the feel of the switches, adjusting radio etc is done safely on old cars. My Arosa makes me feel alive, good and a sense of achievement. My brain has a workout, that’s best thing for my body.

This made me laugh and feel smug this morning when i opened my monthly Which Magazine. It makes me enjoy my ‘basic’ Arosa much more when I read stuff like this and i know I’ve done the right thing by owning and driving a ‘drivers’ car. What’s point of getting a loan to the hilt for a new car for the spec you would never use or want?

It’s the anti roll bar link bush. Please please please use a bit of thick 6”x 6” plywood to support the car and not like you’ve done as old cars are thin in those corners!!

There’s plenty of space and good access. If it’s damp then you’ve holes.

Welcome in to the family!

That’s an interesting series of cuts to do all of that. It’s the sort of challenge I’d be happy do myself with a bit of planning. Bet there’s easy 200 hrs in that just to drop the floor in and sit the engine, box and running gear in. I was once going to do that with an early polo in the early nineties as I had a spare UR quattro running gear. I was influenced by a friend at the time who had an XR4i floor pan and the running gear in a 1985 XR2 RWD.

@mk2 nicely worded!! What I would do to add to that is air intake pipe off and ‘chuck a grenade in it’ with some easy start, or squirt some ‘premium’ high octane petrol down the plugs then start it. Although OP says all the electrics are back and working, does that include spark plugs too?

There was a mini cockup in my specs. The standard size is 6J not 6.5J so it’s only oversize by 12.5mm although the offset sends the wheel outwards a bit too. My idea was not to use mad 8J rims but to get close to std and just make it look deeper.

For now I’m going to run my winter tyres off which are thin 165/65/14. They will be stretched but that’s also a good thing as I’m playing safe and checking wheel arch clearance.

I like the challenge, want steels, looks the style, made to fit, stronger than alloy…….. what more can I say?

For a bit of fun I decided to band my own wheels myself (VW Up) as I wanted to learn something new. I could pay to have it done plus postage as no one is local to me and then wait weeks (the weeks bit is the killer) but decided not to. Looking on you tube there’s plenty of videos showing how it’s done and mostly all are profile cut on a lathe. As it happens I don’t have a lathe. A few others on YT made jigs to hold hubs and fit the rims to them and using contraptions to hold angle grinders for steady cuts. As it happens I don’t have a jig either. The bands that are used are mostly accurately formed in rollers to achieve a perfect circle… don’t have one of those either… Okay lets begin.. I needed a swivel base I can acurately get some readings from, hmmm ok I’ve a few cake making turntables in plastic 🙄. that I use for painting components. They are a bit wobbly but have ball bearings in them so I ‘shimmed’ them up and made them stable. I Center marked the turntable and mounted a takeaway tub in the middle as a hub alignment then dropped the wheel onto it. It worked and zero run out!! I made an angle grinder jig to align and stabilise my cutting method and that went well. So, the quick story… I cut the rim, knocked off the outer, rolled by hand the new band and fastened it all together, welded and managed to get it close to within 2mm runout which I think is a brilliant achievement using junk tools method.

Think I’d be using a satellite calibration on my phone side by side first and see how it responds, make notes then analyse

Smells a little…

Good to know

Never thought of it turning to vinegar but that makes perfect sense. I always use premium E5 in my motorcycles because if I don’t use a full tank and they end up not getting used it preserves the tank and carbs better.

Is this the norm now for bushes? Without crawling underneath the car the last mot inspector mentioned the ns trailing bush on the wishbone is soft and caused early tyre wear. My new at the time wishbones are around 3 1/2 year old only and 18,000 m. Time to do it all again but bushes not wishbones

Mine have gone soft so time to replace, anyone using any fancy ones worth recommending?

On another note I’m going from alloys to steel wheels too and dropping a band in them as I’ve a set of UP steelies

Ah the Fantasia green virus 🦠!! I’ve got it too. Always wanted a Fantasia green Tdi and never found one although I did see a fantasia green one broken down just off the motorway nr me but i couldn’t stop. I ended up with a beautiful met blue coloured Arosa Tdi instead